Conservation Film Festival

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the American Conservation Film Festival right here in Shepherdstown, WV. I only got to attend one of the blocks of the festival, which was hosted by the opera house in town. During the time I went there were four films that were shown, all having a nature theme to them. The first film was about a paleontologist who talked about some of the parks across the country that are great locations for digging. While this film was very entertaining, it was my least favorite out of the four that were shown. Secondly, we saw a movie that was about a wildlife photographer who traveled to different parts of Alaska to experience the natural beauty of the state. The film was broken into five different parts that corresponded to each area that he was filming at. The camera work in this film was incredible and some of the shots that he was able to get were amazing. We saw everything from bears playing to glaciers that were hundreds of feet tall. The third film that we watched was about a couple who had met through the National Park Service and through a mutual love of the outdoors. It begins by the couple explaining how they met in a specific park in Wyoming and ends with their wedding in the park they met in. While the film also had a lot of great camera work throughout, the story behind it was extremely heartwarming and that had a really powerful effect on the tone of the film. Lastly, we watched "Sticky" which was an animated short film about a type of stick bug that went extinct on an island off the shore of New Zealand. While many scientists believed it to be extinct, there was one group of scientists that visited the island and found a group of the insects still alive, the last of their kind. The film was extremely informational and taught me about a type of bug that I didn't even know existed. In addition to that, the animation in the film was flawless and extremely visual. After attending this film festival I felt inspired and even had some new ideas for ways to edit my final video. If you ever have the chance to attend this film festival I would definitely recommend it!